Courts

Karen Harrington fails to have conviction for murder of Santina Cawley (2) overturned

Convicted killer claimed use of CCTV in case was breach of right to privacy

Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy said insofar as CCTV footage is concerned the court 'has stated time and again that an individual does not have an expectation of privacy while moving through public spaces'. Photograph: Alan Betson

Paul Neilan
Thu Jun 6 2024 - 20:10

Karen Harrington, who argued that her privacy rights were breached during the investigation into the murder of two-year-old Santina Cawley, is to remain serving her life sentence after failing in a bid to have her conviction overturned.

Returning the judgment of the Court of Appeal on Thursday, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy said that insofar as CCTV footage is concerned the court “has stated time and again that an individual does not have an expectation of privacy while moving through public spaces”.

Harrington (40) had denied the murder of Santina at her apartment at Elderwood Park, Boreenmanna Road, Cork, on July 5th, 2019. However, in May 2022 at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork, a jury of seven men and four women returned a unanimous guilty verdict before Mr Justice Michael MacGrath.

The trial heard that Michael Cawley, Santina’s father, had been in a relationship with Harrington at the time. He had left Santina in Harrington’s care in her apartment when he went into Cork City in the early hours of July 5th, 2019, to try to find his cousin, who had travelled from Limerick.

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During the trial the jury heard evidence that Santina suffered a total of 53 separate injuries and assistant state pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster told the trial that the injuries could not have been accidental such was their multiplicity and ubiquity all over the child’s body.

At the Court of Appeal in March, Jane Hyland SC, for Harrington, argued that CCTV footage of Harrington’s duplex taken from a premises that backed on to the front of the defendant’s house amounted to a breach of privacy and should not have been put before a jury.

Ms Hyland said that “the trial judge erred in law in admitting into evidence CCTV footage from Clanrickarde Estate”.

“It is submitted that the footage invaded the appellant’s right to privacy together with the inviolability of her dwelling under the Irish Constitution by capturing not only the exterior of her dwelling but the interior also,” said Ms Hyland.

In dismissing the appeal on Thursday Ms Justice Kennedy said the court was not persuaded that the appellant’s right to privacy was infringed upon.

“No fundamental injustice may be said to arise in the circumstances where the footage was harvested to advance the investigation and transpired to provide relevant and admissible evidence at trial,” said Ms Justice Kennedy. She said the footage was taken from “communal areas” and was “highly probative and the balance certainly lay in its admission”.

Ms Justice Kennedy said that even if the objection to the evidence had been made at the trial, which was not the case, “we cannot see that the appellant would have been successful in excluding the evidence”.

At the appeal hearing Ms Hyland submitted that the CCTV footage “directly interfered” with Harrington’s right to privacy under EU law with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights and the protection of personal data under the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

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